EIGHT GREEK police officers involved in the 2006 beating of a Cypriot student were yesterday sentenced to over a year imprisonment.
However, not one of the officers will face jail time as the judge said the officers could buy their sentences for €5 a day.
The sentences ranged between 15 months and 39 months imprisonment.
Protestors reacted to the decision by throwing bottles and stones at police outside the court room in Thessaloniki.
Avgoustinos Demetriou was beaten up by out of uniform policemen for his reported involvement in skirmishes that broke out in the Greek city to mark the 33rd anniversary of the uprising at the Polytechnic in November 2006.
After handcuffing him, police officers forced the 24-year-old student to the ground where they repeatedly kicked and punched him in the face, before dragging him through the street, while he was covered in blood and calling for help. Demetriou also claimed that police continued to beat him after they had detained him.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Demetriou said he would have liked to have seen at least one of the officers behind bars. Nevertheless his family was reportedly happy with the guilty sentences.
All eight officers have appealed the decision.
Parents call for release of alleged rioters
THE PARENTS of two Cypriot students arrested for their alleged involvement in demonstrations in Greece over the shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos have called on the government to release their boys.
Nikos Onoufriou and Marinos Kartouvi were arrested in Larissa on December 8 and are being held in police custody. The pair face a number of misdemeanors and criminal offences and could also be charged under the anti-terrorist law.
But Onoufriou’s mother said the boys were innocent and caught up in the skirmishes by accident. She said the duo had been walking home from university when they were forced to walk through the demonstration because their flat was near the square where it was being held.
The youth’s parents said their son had never been involved in any illegal organisation or political group, and that the two had been arrested for no reason.
Reports said the parents had already spoken to the Justice Minister about the government’s intervention and that Kypros Chrysostomides said he would do what he could.
Onoufriou’s father has already flown to Greece to see how he can get the boys’ released. In the meantime the families have appealed to have the students released pending their trial.
Tassos honour
CyBC director Makis Keravnos said yesterday that the board of directors had agreed to name the main room of an archive building currently under construction the ‘Tassos Papadopoulos’ room.
The decision was taken during an extraordinary board meeting during which one minute’s silence was kept in honour of the recently deceased former president.
Keravnos said naming the room after Papadopoulos was the least the state channel could do for the man who had contributed so much to Cyprus and who had been an ardent supporter and visionary behind the archive building.
